Existentialism, aliens and referentially unrestricted worlds

被引:1
作者
Longenecker, Michael Tze-Sung [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Notre Dame, 100 Malloy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA
关键词
Existentialism; Serious actualism; Aliens; Possible worlds; Modality; Referentially unrestricted worlds; ACTUALISM;
D O I
10.1007/s11229-017-1618-2
中图分类号
N09 [自然科学史]; B [哲学、宗教];
学科分类号
01 ; 0101 ; 010108 ; 060207 ; 060305 ; 0712 ;
摘要
Existentialism claims that propositions that directly refer to individuals depend on those individuals for their existence. I argue for two points regarding Existentialism. First, I argue that recent accounts of Existentialism run into difficulties accommodating the possibility of there being a lonely alien electron. This problem is distinct from one of the better-known alien problems-concerning iterated modal properties of aliens-and can't be solved using a standard response to the iterated case. Second, though the lonely alien electron problem might seem to be reason to reject the sort of Existentialist view at hand, there's a plausible way to preserve the view: accept the existence of possible worlds that directly refer to individuals that don't exist in those worlds. Such a solution might seem incompatible with Existentialism, but I show that Existentialists can avoid the incompatibility and should find the resulting view plausible.
引用
收藏
页码:3723 / 3738
页数:16
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